BuckIt

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Bucket Item Gemini Idea Generation
Sponsored Challenges Tab
Sponsored Challenge Item Task
Gemini Post Verification
Sponsored Challenge Reward
Sponsored Tag & Coupon Usage on Home Page
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Sponsor Campaign Gemini Generation

Inspiration

Making plans with friends often starts with “we should do that” and ends with nothing actually happening. Between finding something nearby, coordinating everyone’s interests, and figuring out what fits the budget, even a simple outing can take more effort than expected. Activities can also get expensive, making it harder to try new things regularly.

We built BuckIt to help friends turn those ideas into shared experiences. We wanted a platform where people could discover fun activities in their area, keep each other motivated, and make going out more affordable. BuckIt revolutionizes discovery, personalization, loyalty, rewards, and post-purchase of different companies.

What it does

BuckIt is a shared bucket-list app that brings activity discovery, social accountability, and rewards together. Friends can create lists of things they want to do, explore local activities, and track their progress together. Activities are organized by category and time commitment, making it easier to find something that fits the day.

After completing an activity, users can capture a photo, tag their friends, and share the moment. Google Gemini evaluates the photo against the activity’s criteria, while the app checks when and where it was taken. Verified sponsored challenges, transforming company discovery, unlock coupons, illustrating how brand partnerships could help lower the cost of future adventures. When a user completes a verified sponsored challenge, customers posts get tagged with how the reward was used, increasing exposure of the company to user's inner circle.

For days when users need inspiration, Gemini suggests activities based on their city, season, shared list, and mood, including prompts like “cheap eats” or “rainy day.”

Each completed activity adds a colorful water layer to the user’s bucket. After ten completions, the bucket overflows in a celebration, turning progress into something friends can see and enjoy together.

A sponsor also has a dashboard that demonstrates how activity-based rewards could connect relevant brands with participants. Every challenge a user completes tells us what they love: outdoors, food, local events, big trips. That means brands can reach the right people. For example, Patagonia doesn’t need everyone, just users who are 40 percent or more Outdoors in challenges. Campaign funnels analyze how many users add sponsored challenges to their list, submit, and redeemed bonuses. Companies can also see what people bought with rewards, and understand where the audience is. Gemini can suggest even more campaign ideas to target users based on engagement to increase revenue.

How we built it

We built BuckIt as a native iOS app using Swift and SwiftUI. We connected shared lists, activity browsing, a social feed, photo capture, verification, and a coupon wallet into one experience.

We integrated the Google Gemini API for three features:

Evaluating activity photos against verification criteria.
Generating personalized bucket-list ideas.
Suggesting future sponsored campaigns from demo audience and participation data.

For verification, Gemini returns structured JSON with a match decision, individual criteria, explanations, and a confidence score. Native location and photo metadata checks provide additional context.

The hackathon prototype stores app data and photos locally and uses seeded Seattle activities and social content. We also built a sponsor dashboard to demonstrate how activity-based rewards could connect relevant brands with participants. Sponsor partnerships and coupons are simulated in this version.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was making the experience feel simple despite having several connected steps. Discovering an activity, adding it to a shared list, capturing a photo, checking it, and receiving a reward needed to feel like one natural flow.

Another challenge was deciding what photo verification could reasonably establish. A photo can show evidence of an activity, but it cannot prove every detail, for example, exactly how far someone hiked. We combined Gemini’s assessment with time and location checks and displayed explanations so users could understand the result.

We also had to account for API availability during a live demo. We included model fallbacks and a clearly labeled offline mode so the app could still demonstrate the full experience without a successful API request.

What we learned

We learned that helping people follow through takes more than giving them a list of suggestions. Shared progress, encouragement from friends, and an achievable next step all matter. On top of that, an affordable, fun idea is much more useful when people can actually fit it into their budget.

Technically, we learned how to connect multimodal AI with native iOS features and turn structured model responses into understandable feedback. We also learned to design around the limits of AI verification and distinguish a working prototype from the infrastructure needed for a live product.

What’s next for BuckIt

We want to expand local activity discovery, make affordable and free options easier to find, and add real-time synchronization for shared lists. We also hope to explore partnerships with local businesses so completing activities can unlock meaningful savings.

Our goal is to make “we should do that sometime” easier to turn into “let’s go.”